The UK currently has more than one million job vacancies and a historically low rate of unemployment. Given the limited pool of potential recruits out there for professional service firms, finding the right candidate for the job can be challenging.
And yet, there is a ubiquitous part of our everyday lives that many firms often overlook when trying to recruit for new roles – social media.
Finding the best and brightest solicitors and accountants via social media is becoming an increasingly popular method.
With the right skills at a premium and a shortage of candidates, digital marketing can help you get ahead of the competition if executed correctly.
Platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter offer you an excellent means of not only advertising for jobs, but also directly seeking out the people with the right legal and financial skills.
To help you make the most of what social media has to offer, we have answered some of the common questions firms have about recruiting online.
Digital marketing vs recruiting agencies
Traditionally, most professional service firms will have relief on recruitment agencies to fill important roles within their practice but employing the services of a recruiter can be costly.
However, a growing number of law and accountancy firms are choosing to cut out the middle man and go direct to candidates using digital marketing – making use of their website, social media and digital advertising campaigns to reach the right audience.
Most recruitment firms already rely on digital marketing when trying to fill a role, often using job sites, social media and paid-for advertising campaigns. These costs are passed on to their clients, along with the additional fees for their time and services.
By avoiding using these services and advertising directly you can drastically reduce your costs and often be as, if not more, effective in finding the best candidates.
How should I advertise a job on social media?
Before advertising a job on social media, you need to think about what platforms you intend to target.
This may depend on the role and the ideal candidate for the role. To decide on the most suitable platforms you need to think about their age, level of experience and other key demographics.
Younger applicants may favour less formal types of social media such as Instagram or Facebook, while older candidates may be more active on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Paid vs Organic recruitment advertising
Next, you need to think about whether you are going to run an organic campaign, which relies on your posts being shared naturally by your contacts and other users, or a paid-for campaign, which uses existing social media advertising tools to target specific individuals or profile characteristics.
While organic campaigns can be effective for broader more junior roles, such as trainees or administration staff, the more skilled the position, the more likely you are to require some element of paid-for advertising.
Using paid-for advertising brings many advantages. One of the key benefits though is the ability to target your adverts at specific groups. LinkedIn for example allows you to narrow down your audience by a wide range of characteristics, including age, skills, professional qualifications or even membership of specific organisations.
The premium version even has specific recruitment tools that allow you to directly message candidates via their inbox. This is a favoured method for most modern professional recruiters and head-hunters, so why not cut out the middle man and use paid for advertising yourself to recruit for roles.
Facebook also has similar advertising tools, although they are less targeted at people’s skills and career information.
If you have run organic advertising campaigns in the past and enjoyed minimal success, then perhaps it is time to boost your posts with a paid-for campaign – it doesn’t have to break the bank.
Remember you can always run a hybrid campaign that combines both organic content and paid-for advertising. Often this approach can be very effective in both raising awareness of career opportunities at your firm and targeting the right people for the role.
How do I find the right candidates on social media?
Searching for the right audience and creating adverts that reflect their values and needs is an essential part of preparing an advert.
By this stage, you should have already decided on your platforms and whether you intend to run an organic, paid for or hybrid recruitment advertising campaign.
You should also know the type of candidate you are looking for. Combine these factors to put together a list of characteristics and demographics for your ideal recruit.
Using this information, you can create content that is more suited to this audience and use existing social media tools to promote your posts to the right people.
Do not underestimate the importance of your audience. If your adverts are too broad and don’t get to the right people your campaign won’t be effective.
What role does multimedia content play in recruitment via social media?
When advertising a role, you want to quickly draw people’s attention to your post and get them to engage with it.
However, over the last decade, the attention span of the average social media user has shrunk, which is why it is essential that you quickly and clearly share your message with them.
When advertising a role think about the message you are trying to portray and how will you get this across to candidates.
Reams of written information can be very off-putting, so why not use video, GIFs and animations instead.
These are eye-catching and require a person to invest less time and effort into engaging with the post than traditional forms of advertising.
If advertising for a more junior role you could, for example, post a short video story to Instagram or prepare a video testimonial from existing trainees to outline the benefits of the role.
If you are trying to get a lot of information over in one go, then a short post supported by a rotating GIF may be more effective.
Try to be as creative as you can to capture the attention of the best candidates. If you are unsure whether your approach will be effective, why not ask your newest team members what they think is the best way to attract new candidates, they may, after all, have the best idea of what is and isn’t effective.
As well as creating a winning social media campaign it is important to have an effective landing page to direct traffic to.
This should not only outline the roles available but clearly lay out the benefits of working for your firm and expectations for career development and progression.
We highly recommend including written and video testimonials from existing staff members on this page.
How we can help
Managing a recruitment campaign can be challenging, especially if your focus is on client care and supporting the development of your existing team and practice.
By outsourcing your social media recruitment to our team, you can create campaigns that are effective and reach the right audience.
We can not only assist you with targeting your roles on social media but we can also create a wide range of content that will help you to advertise the jobs you have on offer, including GIFs, animations, videos and much more.
If you would like assistance with your next social media recruitment campaign, please speak to us today.
